Get on the Burning Crusade beta

Want to beta-test World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade? That's handy, because Blizzard's running a contest in WOW to choose people to do just that. Smashing luck you stopped by really isn't it!

Actually there are three contests, and the point of all this is to help stress-test new server hardware to Blizzard can make sure it's up to snuff. The first of the three is all about racing to level 50. The 1000 quickest in each region - or simply the 1000 who do it if there aren't more - will qualify for a BC beta spot. The second contest takes place on the Honour Contest Realm and is called Battle for Warsong Gulch. Capped at level 19, 500 players from each region split between Horde and Alliance will fight it out and whoever has the highest honour at the end is in the beta.

Finally, for those of you who like running alts, is a real timesink: get as many level 25 characters as possible. All you have to do is run characters up to level 25 over and over again. Once you've filled your ten slots, you're advised to just delete one or other of the ones you're done with and keep going as it'll all be counted up. And, if you can still bear the very sight of WOW after all that (and four times the population of earth apparently can), then you'll get to go off on a Burning Crusade at some point.

The only stipulation is that you have to do all this between March 7th and March 27th - apparently it's open to anybody with an active account in Europe, Korea or North America.